


Levels (epilogue)

by losing_sanity_fast



Series: Adventure-seeker Gon in the Cyber Dungeon quest! [2]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Don't copy to another site, Don't repost, Fluff, M/M, an epilogue to another fic, mentions of body horror, mentions of cyber horror, mentions of serious injury, probably doesn't make sense on its own
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 22:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20881739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losing_sanity_fast/pseuds/losing_sanity_fast
Summary: Takes place after the events in "Levels."





	Levels (epilogue)

**Author's Note:**

> When i wrote "Levels" I thought the ending mirrors canon in a sense, so the readers would feel confident in what happens next. But it appears that i misjudged my ability to write that and make clear implications. i'm posting this separately and not as a chapter because honestly this doesn't read like a chapter of that fic. it's weird idk.
> 
> not betaread, so it's probably mostly one big typo. 
> 
> _I'm not a native speaker of English, so the writing is what it is._

* * *

Zebro, the manager of the Z Corp’s bio-cybernetic labs, lead them to the sterile room. He walked them through the cleaning protocols. Canary, Alluka and Mito went in first into the decontamination chamber. After several minutes they knocked on the glass from the inside, they had changed into pale blue overalls required to work in the sterile room. 

With Zebro’s help Killua and Ikalgo took Gon into the decontamination chamber. It was a series of small spaces. The first one required them to strip naked. Next they entered the showers. They scrubbed themselves and Gon with various cleaning products a few times before the sensors opened the door to the next phase of decontamination. They had to put on goggles and a strong breeze dried them, then they were exposed to a few wavelengths of light. Finally they proceeded to the last tiny room, where they found the change of clothing. 

They carried Gon to the examination table. Machinery and wires hang above it and it gave Killua a flashback to his self-performed operation in the constructor factory. He shivered, cold discomfort spread through his hip, reminding him of the foreign object connect to his body. When they were getting cleaned the two other men threw glances at his artificial leg, a strange construct of metal and synthetic crude pieces connected by thin conduits and cables. 

He preferred not to look at it. In the pillars he did not have to. He had changed their suits only once, after they crossed the thousandth level and the radiation levels dropped. Nanika had taken them to a constructor manufacturing plant because they needed a change of ride. Killua also used the factory’s decontamination facilities, abandoning all the gear he could replace and cleaning everything else from the irradiated and toxic residue collected on it. Then he had dressed himself and Gon in the spare suits. 

He managed not to look down there at the replacement limb. As irrational as that was. He knew the fake leg had not transformed into a real one, avoiding seeing it helped nothing. It still hurt from time to time, and did not always heed his wishes when he moved. He still refused to. Managing Gon’s unconscious, uncomfortably thin body gave him enough of an emotional whiplash. Guilt, helplessness, anger it all flooded him in the moment, making his hands tremble. The urgency and desperation prolonged the whole process, caused him to make mistakes, brought him to tears. Before that he had not even taken Gon’s helmet off. He lied to himself that it was for Gon’s safety, to help him breathe. He just could not look at the hollow face. It was easier to distance himself, treat it all like a task. He had fragile cargo to deliver back to the platforms. Not his partner. 

Especially since the longer he had travelled alone with Nanika the less real his relationship with Gon seemed. Was it not just a byproduct of their isolation? Of the madness in the lower levels. The closer they got to civilisation the more convinced he grew he had made it all up. 

As long as Gon breathed and the version of Nanika policing his neural network confirmed his vitals to register at good enough levels all that romantic stuff did not matter. Or Killua forced himself to think that. They were trying to get back, to survive. His delusions could get addressed later, he repeated to himself while he held Gon tightly, strapped to the moving constructor. Endless hours. Thrown around by the huge machine which had not been designed to carry passengers. He could have watched the recordings from their robots and Nanika copies. He could have but he dared not. If he had imagined it all he was not ready to face that truth. He would not manage to get them back up. 

Now all these fears hit him in the back of his head like a sledgehammer. Canary and Alluka were going to wake Gon up now. Hopefully.

The two women were setting things up around the room, switching on numerous machines and analysing screens. Mito stood by Gon and held his hand. She was whispering and crying. 

She had been furious when Killua called her in the morning, telling her they had got back. Explaining Gon’s situation to her. She yelled at him, for several minutes. He just took it silently. She had every right. When she calmed down, she demanded to be present while they woke Gon up. He agreed.

Alluka had also yelled at him. Though she had had the opportunity to do that much earlier. He started to communicate with her at around level -100, when fairly stable communication with the platforms became possible. 

He had yet to mention the other piece of cargo he had brought back with him, to any of them. He did not really care in what state Ging was. Killua had tried, because he owed Gon. But personally, he did not give a shit if the mass of computer parts and rotting flesh turned completely lifeless during their ascent.

“Can you retrieve the Nanika copy from his neural network?” he asked Alluka to break the silence. 

“I will make a copy of her, but I’ll have to run a lot of diagnostics on her, in case that Pariston thing attached himself to her. I can’t let her sync with the rest of Nanika.”

He nodded. It made sense. He had not synced the copies since she shut down Gon. He worried about that, were they all still Nanika? Would they still be able to sync into one Nanika, or had they become too separate without syncing regularly. Another thing to feel guilty about. 

“It’ll be okay,” Ikalgo said softly. 

“Yeah.” Killua appreciated the words, even if he knew they expressed hope and kindness, not an accurate prediction. After over two months of shutdown their chances were fifty fifty at best. 

Canary attached wires to Gon. His vitals showed up on the screens. So did the neural network’s interface. 

“Initialize full neural network wipe,” Alluka said after a moment. Canary came up to her and embraced her reassuringly. 

“Confirm a full neural network wipe,” the AI replied.

“Confirming a full neural network wipe,” she said. Killua knew his sister well, he could hear hesitation in her voice. She was as scared as him. 

He balled his hands into fists. Tension grew in his jaw. He wanted to go there and also hold Gon’s hand, but he felt Mito would feel insulted if he did. Besides would Gon want Killua to hold his hand? 

The wipe took over fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of heavy silence and machine noises. 

“Full neural wipe complete. Vitals stable. No brain damage detected,” the machine announced.

“Wake the patient up,” Alluka ordered.

“Commencing the switch on.”

The monitors showed increased brain activity. Gon’s breathing picked up. He stirred. 

Mito leaned closer. 

Gon moved his lips. First inaudibly. Then he said something. Quietly. 

Killua felt a tear run down his cheek. He breathed out.

Gon was calling his name. 

*

They came back from physical therapy separately. Gon still had his mostly in the pool, while Killua spent more time at the gym and finished earlier. 

Gon came home to find his boyfriend in the bed and one of their robot nurses making dinner. The other one walked home with him, his doctor did not allow him to travel around the platforms alone. Gon hated to admit it, but he still needed a robot’s back to lean on. It made all the sense in the world. He only had had three weeks of physical therapy so far, from the initial three months the doctors ordered. 

Killua had had his leg regrown a week after they returned, so he also had months of physical therapy ahead of him. 

They rented the tiny flat together, even though both Alluka and Mito offered to take them in and help them get back on their feet. They knew better than that. Robots did not serve them biting sarcasm and schadenfreude at their stumbling movements together with the meals. 

Gon climbed into bed. Killua welcomed him with open arms.

“You didn’t fall on me this time,” he teased, as they settled on the mattress. 

Gon giggled. 

“I’m not really heavy right now, so you shouldn’t complain.”

He got a kiss on the forehead, but then Killua pinched his cheek. 

“I wasn’t complaining, I was complimenting you.”

“It sounded like a complaint.” Gon pouted pro forma.

“I literally pointed out how you’re getting stronger!” Killua pulled on his cheek a bit more.

“Sounded more like whining…” He put his all into a cute sulk.

“I’ll give you whining, idiot.” Killua smiled and initiated a play fight. Gon really appreciated it, especially that Killua did not go easy on him, though after regrowing the limb his body became almost as weak as Gon’s. The process put enormous strain on the whole organism, Gon remembered that from his own arm being rebuilt when he was a child.

They needed to get back into shape. Gon also had to regain some weight, the whole of him looked like Killua’s right leg. Skinny, lacking proper muscle. He lost over twenty kilograms from the shut down and most of his mobility. Being able to roll around on the bed with his boyfriend marked real progress. Even if it left them out of breath after five minutes.

The robots brought their dinner and they had to stop. Initially their food had been almost as awful as the pillar rations. Gon had known it was going to be like this from the start, but it came as a shock to Killua who whined loudly, he expected normal tasty meals as soon as he got home. 

Gon called doctor Cheadle after they finished eating. 

“How are things going?” he asked when she appeared on the screen opposite the bed. 

“We’re still working on how to extract his brain from ‘the soup’.”

“So no change.”

“Little I’m afraid, it’s a tricky thing, but if we manage awards will follow, so everyone is motivated,” she said matter-of-factly. 

Killua snickered by Gon’s side. He had to put a hand over Killua’s mouth to make him stop. 

“Good luck, then. Thank you for doing this.”

“Gon, this is a fantastic opportunity, I’m glad you thought about me.”

“She’s such a scientist,” Killua nuzzled to Gon’s side after the call ended. “She really believes she’s being reassuring.”

“You think? I don’t think she cares if Ging survives or not.” Gon frowned. 

He had no idea who to call, when he finally came to enough to process the whole debacle at the bottom of the pillar. Killua had brought him to the workshop where he had stored the crate with what he had scraped off that column and ceiling. Doctor Cheadle felt like the only choice he had apart from calling the authorities. In the end she sort of called the government herself, through her company. The state Ging found himself in provided opportunity for fame and glory in the scientific community. She did not want to pass it up, so everything had to be above board, not like her shady experiments in the basement. 

The situation actually escalated, because the Zoldycks got involved, they wanted in on the research, claiming the specimen - Ging - belong to them, because Killua retrieved him. They threatened to sue. Killua had a long bitter conversation with his parents to convince them to cooperate. They conceded for the sake of good press, no other argument worked on them. Only the selfish appeal to their ego, that a petty squabble over Ging would have tarnished their brand. They had no sympathy for Gon’s feelings or an ounce of common decency. Gon was left wondering how Killua and Alluka managed to remain sane with a family like that.

“She does care in her own creepy way, if they extract him alive and functional her name will go down in history. Possibly attached to some scientific law or reaction or process. There’s nothing a scientist desires more than that.”

“That’s so cold.” Gon knew Killua was right. And if Ging had any chance of recovery the research dream team gathered around him was going to find it. Whatever their reasons, they were trying to unliquify his father and asked for no money for their effort. He did not want to criticise their character further, so he said instead. “We’ll go down in history too. Everyone wants to learn about what happened down there.”

“For now we’re hiding.” Killua said pointedly. 

Gon kissed Killua. They were avoiding the media, their identities had not been leaked to the press yet. They both hoped to keep their privacy as long as possible, at least until they both regained their strength. And had the time to enjoy each other.

Down in the pillars they could hardly kiss or touch. For the first two weeks awake he did not have the strength for anything but a gentle cuddle. Now he could do more. He yearned for the touch, the sensation of skin under his fingers. 

Gon slid his hands under Killua’s t-shirt.

“Are you sure you’ve the strength for this?” Killua teased and kissed him.

He smiled into the kiss. A challenge. Gon loved challenges as much as he loved his boyfriend. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Now this was plain cheesy, but i'm cheesy, all my stories have cheesy outcomes. i'm basic.  
i hope these two scenes make the story feel complete.


End file.
